Adeola’s Book Club
2026-27: How to tell the truth
An honorable human relationship… is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
-Adrienne Rich,
Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying
Why is it so hard to tell the truth?
We do not want our friends, lovers, family, colleagues and leaders to lie us. A lie, once discovered, is experienced as a deep betrayal of a personal relationship, a social contract or a body politic. At the same time, we often find ourselves accepting or participating in some lie or another, because so many of us have never learned how to tell the truth about who we are at home, at work, in our personal and public lives.
Learning to tell the truth involves increasing our capacity: to see and hear clearly, to speak genuinely, to value the freedom of the other, to act with honor and to overcome all obstacles to the truth.
What are we reading?
We’re reading fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, at least one spy novel, romance, self-help, essays, several books written originally in French, Arabic and Italian, by authors from Egypt, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, UK, France and USA. All the authors are examining how people become persuaded of a truth about the world, starting from different class and cultural positions.
Sometimes the authors (or their characters) are trying to tell a difficult truth about themselves or their societies. Or maybe they are pulling the wool over our eyes. Whatever is going on, each of these texts gives a masterclass in how to tell the truth.
This Year’s Reading List
March: The Face: Cartography of the Void by Chris Abani
April: Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
May: Radical Friendship by Kate Johnson
June: Persuasion by Jane Austen
July: Trust by Hernan Diaz
August: Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
September: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
October: A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux
November: Flashlight by Susan Choi
December: A Flat Place by Noreen Masud
January: The Secret Hours by Mick Herron
February: Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
March: How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon
Adeola Enigbokan
More about Adeola:
You can find out about where she's worked, her clients and qualifications here. You can read some of her writing here. You can watch some of her talks here, and you can follow her adventures here. Adeola has practiced tarot for over 20 years.
All rights reserved © 2023